


The Patagonese Penguin

by Entropy House (AnonEhouse)



Category: Drake's Venture (1980), Maltese Falcon (1941)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crack, Gen, Humor, Penguins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-16 01:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonEhouse/pseuds/Entropy%20House
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hard boiled private detective penguin, Egg Laid, is no fluffy chick. He expects his clients to lie to him. That's all right, he can get the job done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Patagonese Penguin

(If you are reading this on any PAY site this is a STOLEN WORK, the author has NOT Given Permission for it to be here. If you're paying to read it, you're being cheated too because you can read it on Archiveofourown for FREE.)

The moment he walked onto the beach, I knew he was trouble. Oh, he was handsome, and he offered me the finest pebbles, but I knew the story he told me was the bunk.

You could see it in his beady black eyes. But a penguin's got to make a living, and the fish he offered when I turned down the pebbles were honest enough. In fact, they were smelt, rather like his tale.

Right after he left my rock, a gull swooped in with bad news. That's gulls for you, they delight in telling you some new predator has just ripped your cousin Zulie in half. Well, Zulie wasn't much, but when a predator kills your cousin, a penguin's got to do something.

So I fluffed my feathers, sharpened my beak and claws and waddled to the scene of the crime. Gulls can't count. One herring or a shoal full, it's all the same to them. Well, it's not the same to old Egg Laid, that's me, in case you hadn't read the inscription on my rock. The beach was covered with predators, big, ugly, smelly things that made unpleasant noises and ran around shoving shiny things into penguins right and left.

I decided this situation needed further consideration. I wasn't being paid enough smelt to take a fall for any penguin, no matter how sleek his feathers and bright his eye. There are plenty of other gay 'guins in the sea, as my foster father used to tell me.

Of course, at the rate the smellies were killing penguins off, that might not be true for much longer. 

I went back to my rock, where short, piebald and handsome was waiting for me with more fish, and a new tale that smelt even worse. Now he said he'd had a deal with one of the predators, only it had gone back on its word and turned into a ravening monster. He gave me a melting glance.

I gave him a cold shoulder, which of course excited him tremendously. He was cute, but not that cute. I let him think I was all gung-ho for his idiot plan-- something about spearing seals from the big floating piece of wood the predators arrived on. Now, I may be young and adorable, but I'm no fluffy chick any longer.

He left and another group of would be employers came to my rock. If this kept up, I'd have to think about putting up a toll bridge. The second group's story was even prettier. The predators had stolen a wonderful, magical beast from them, and they wanted me to get it back.

Eh, it's all smelt. I took the fish, and went back to contemplate the deal. Looking over the pile of day-old fish, it stunk, it really did. I thought of how I could play one group against the other, gull the gulls, play the predators, charm the charmer and bamboozle the boobs.

But hey, my legs are too short for all that running around, so I just used my head. I waited until all the predators were gathered on the beach for some silly little predator ceremony.

Then the hermit crabs I'd bribed with the smelt undermined the beach on my signal. The predators fell into pits, and I waddled along, whacking each one on the noggin with my favorite pebble. This excited the remainder of my flock, of course, and they hurried to add their own pebbles, burying the predators under rock sufficient to make very good nests for next breeding season.

It wouldn't have been good business for me to have done a job and got nothing for it-- after all the crabs got the smelt--, so I kept the least smelly predator of the lot for myself. After a while he tamed down quite well, and not only learned to give me a proper flipper massage, but proved to know shorthand and legalese, so I made him my Predator Friday.

He nags me sometimes to make our partnership legal, but I'm a free penguin, always have been, always will be.

**Author's Note:**

> Egg Laid is Sam Spade... yes, I know. Predator Friday is Thomas Doughty. I don't care who else dies in Drake's Venture fic, I want Thomas to survive.


End file.
